HP OpenView Network Node Manager (NNM)
| HP OpenView [HPOpenView] is a broad family of network and system management products. This reflects the fact that network management needs in general are sophisticated and wide- ranging , and no single product can generally satisfy any more than a small subset of the overall user requirements. Central to the function of NNM is the management station ”the command and control center. This is the computer (UNIX or Windows) that performs the bulk of the data:
For large networks, there can be more than one management station, and these can exchange information with one another. A management station can also delegate NE data acquisition to collection stations. The latter connect to NEs and collect status and configuration data, which is then passed to the management station. Typically, HP suggests that a single management station can handle 5,000 managed objects. Up to 60,000 objects can be managed if collection stations are deployed along with the management station [HPNNMScale2002]. This type of distribution helps to reduce the load on the NMS. In its default-installed state, NNM provides the following main features:
As these are quite generic NMS facilities, each of them is discussed in general terms in the following sections. Each section is then followed by an NNM-specific description. These facilities are all based on manually retrieving or asynchronously receiving data from the network. Pushing data onto the network can be achieved only by using special-purpose, third-party, add-on software. In this sense, NNM is a platform on which additional software can be layered in order to achieve full-featured network management. This again reflects that network management is complex and requires a range of software applications that go together to make up an overall solution. As networks grow, they can be effectively managed only using advanced software. An interesting aspect of managing modern networks is that there is no single solution to all the network management needs. This is similar to the fact that there is no single desktop software application that satisfies all possible needs (word processing, email, Web browsing, spreadsheet, etc.). Desktop user workflows and business processes are generally too complex and varied for it to be feasible to produce one application capable of handling them all. Instead, a range of software packages are deployed and used. In the same way, the many commercial network management tools go together to make up a continuum of packages. This then forms the basis for the management solution. Substantial teams of people are needed in vendor organizations to service the ongoing (and changing) needs of large enterprise customers. Before looking at NNM, we take a brief detour into the important area of mediation. MediationOnce we start to look at the way NMS are used in practice, the area of mediation becomes relevant. This is another type of layering, similar to the ones we have mentioned in previous chapters. Mediation software exists to protect application layer software from proprietary configuration data. Figure 5-1 illustrates a multivendor network operating in conjunction with a mediation layer that feeds network-originated data into a set of NMS applications. Raw data is processed by the mediation layer and passed up to the applications for further processing. Figure 5-1. Mediation in a multivendor network. An example of one of these applications is billing ”the A (accounting) in FCAPS. The NEs in Figure 5-1 generate data relevant to billing, such as:
Typically, the NEs generate billing data in a proprietary format, and this must be transferred from the network into the mediation layer. The processed data emitted by the mediation software is presented in a standard format such as Billing Automatic Message Accounting Format (BAF) that can be handled using a standard commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) accounting package. |
EAN: 2147483647
Pages: 150